One of the most famous Scottish Gaelic words, a loch is almost always a lake (there are some exceptions, more on that in a bit in our section on sea lochs).

A lagoon (#48) is a shallow elongated body of water separated form a larger body of water by a sandbank, coral reef or other barrier, while a barachois (#49) is a coastal lagoon separation by the ocean by a sand bar that may periodically get filled with salt water when the tide is high. Nature writing lovers will adore this collection of lyrical essays … Traversing Borneo to New Zealand to North London, it explores what bodies of water have meant to [Powles] while navigating girlhood and growing up” The English language has various ways of defining places where the sea projects inland—either as an indent in the shoreline like a bay or gulf, or as a more narrow water passage opening from the coastline. The common term for this is an inlet (#41), also called an arm of the sea or sea arm (#42).Many people use the word strait to refer to larger channels, like the Denmark Strait between Iceland and Greenland. But there are also smaller straits like the Strait of Gibraltar, which is just 8.1 miles (13 km) wide at its narrowest point. Tributaries are filled with freshwater, and they supply the mainstem of the river with water as they flow toward their outlet. The majority of the world’s large rivers have dozens, if not hundreds of smaller tributaries that drain a different watershed. Fancy yourself as a geographer? Here are some superb fun facts about the different bodies of water on Earth that you can use to impress your friends and family: 1|The Sargasso Sea Is The Only Sea That Doesn’t Have A Land Boundary Known as the “Oasis of America,” Huacachina in Peru is one of the only true desert oases in the Americas. (Photo: Carlos Adampol Galindo/CC BY-SA 2.0)

The mighty fjord is a type of large, glacially-carved valley that has since filled up with seawater. The term “fjord” comes from Old Norse, though it has since been added to the English language. a lake that is permanently covered by ice and whose water remains liquid by the pressure of the ice sheet and geothermal heating. They often occur under glaciers or ice caps. Lake Vostok in Antarctica is an example. Furthermore, while we often think of lakes as fairly small bodies of water, there are some truly massive lakes out there. Nature writing lovers will adore this collection of lyrical essays – Evening Standard, Best Non-Fiction Books of the YearWe should also mention that some people will use the word “brooklet” to refer to very small brooks or bournes. 9. Burn Her writing retains a dreamlike quality, conjured through descriptions that are luminous and rich, saturated with soft edges – Bath Magazine a semi-enclosed coastal body of water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea creek". Macmillan Dictionary. Springer Nature Limited . Retrieved 18 May 2019. BRITISH a long narrow area of ocean stretching into the land creek". Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, LLC . Retrieved 18 May 2019. Chiefly Atlantic States and British...a recess or inlet in the shore of the sea.

I grew up with access to swimming lessons and public swimming pools – privileges that are easy to take for granted when you’re a child.’ Nina Mingya Powles first learned to swim in Borneo, where her mother was born and her grandfather studied freshwater fish. There, the local swimming pool became her first body of water. Through her life there have been others that have meant different things, but have still been, in their own way, home: from the wild coastline of New Zealand to a pond in the northwest of London. Nina’s debut essay collection Small Bodies of Water, which weaves together personal memories, dreams and nature writing, and what it means to belong, won the inaugural Nan Shepherd Prize for nature writing. You can read a brilliant excerpt below. A series of loosely connected essays, Small Bodies of Water’s luscious prose flows deftly between moments in the author’s international life, each so vividly and sensuously portrayed as to immerse us in a world, and the age at which that world was lived. We move with Powles across time and geography – from adolescence to adulthood , from Borneo to New Zealand to London – exploring the fluid (and sometimes suspended) nature of identity and home. Deeply embodied, the pleasures of swimming, food, languages, flora and fauna are keenly felt as anchors, and an almost aqueous merging of the bloodline across generations pulses through it. It’s believed that the word derives from the Middle Dutch word kille, which meant riverbed or a water channel. Nowadays, the term has more or less fallen out of use except in parts of New York and New Jersey in the United States, which the Dutch had colonized during the eighteenth century.

Mr. Grossart, small water bodies are particularly affected by declining water levels due to sealing, drainage and drought. What happens when ponds intermittently run dry, and how resilient are they to weather extremes?

Memory. Identity. Belonging. Home. This is a collection that seeks and recalls these concepts, forges and reforms these notions. Its essays take place in brightly chlorinated pools and along high tide bays, are contained within jars of formalin and brushstrokes of calligraphic ink, are expressed in the roil and fury of outer shores and innermost bodies — all liquid in their construction and manifestation. In Australia, the world billabong derives from the Wiradjuri word “bilabang.” Billabong means lake in the Wiradjuri language from what is now New South Wales.